FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT JAKARTA - PAGE 5

Northwest Airlines Corp., Minneapolis, said Monday it will form an operational and marketing alliance with Garuda Indonesia Airlines as part of its long-term growth strategy in Asia. A memorandum of understanding calls for the carriers to coordinate schedules and connections to link points in Indonesia and North America. The carriers will also share reservation codes and marketing programs. Northwest said it will fly three times a week between Seattle, Osaka and Jakarta.

Mudslides triggered by flash floods in eastern Indonesia killed 27 people, local officials and police said Tuesday. At least five others were reported missing. The floods swept away 17 houses Monday night on Flores island, 1,030 miles east of the capital city of Jakarta, said Paulinus Domi, head of the local district of Ende. Police said they were searching for survivors late Tuesday in three villages hit by the flooding.

A 20-year-old climber died shortly after reaching the top of North America's highest peak, just days after James Nasti, of Naperville, became the first known person to die at the summit, Denali National Park and Preserve officials said Tuesday. Pungkas Tri Baruno, 20, of Jakarta, Indonesia, died Monday night while descending Mt. McKinley, a park spokeswoman said. ---------- Page compiled from Tribune news services

With the ink barely dry on a ground-breaking pact between Portugal and Indonesia on East Timor, the region's resistance said Thursday the deal would go nowhere unless its jailed chief was freed. Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, vice-president of the National Council for the Timorese Resistance (CNRT), said this was the message he would take to a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan scheduled for this weekend. "We will eventually take a very tough position on this," he said, referring to guerrilla chief Xanana Gusmao, jailed for 20 years in Jakarta in 1992.

Their demands for quick political reform rebuffed, students battled police on four Jakarta campuses Saturday as they pressed for President Suharto's ouster. Tens of thousands of students in at least a dozen other cities also rallied against the government, which is trying to cope with Indonesia's worst economic turmoil in decades. Police fired tear gas at rock-throwing students in the most violent day of campus protests in the capital since the economy plummeted last year.

Troops opened fire to disperse rampaging gangs of Muslims and Christians in eastern Indonesia on Sunday, an official said. At least 13 people were killed. Eleven of the dead had been shot and two others stabbed in the clashes on Haruku Island, in Maluku province, about 1,400 miles northeast of Jakarta, the official said. He said troops had opened fire to disperse the crowd. Last week in the capital, Jakarta, armed forces commander Gen. Wiranto announced he had ordered his troops to shoot troublemakers on sight.

Exxon Corp. said Wednesday it has struck a deal with the government of Indonesia for the two to spend some $40 billion to develop the Natuna natural gas field in the South China Sea. The agreement signed in Jakarta between Exxon affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Natuna Inc. and Indonesia's national oil company, Pertamina, calls for the two to be 50-50 partners in the project. Pertamina, the world's largest seller of liquefied natural gas, will market the product in the Far East, with support from Exxon, the project operator.

The tranquil beauty of this paradise island seems worlds away from the political upheaval that saw Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, descend recently into violence and chaos. But that does not mean Bali stands aloof from the demands for reform that forced the resignation of longtime dictator President Suharto, and which could yet force his successor, President B.J. Habibie, to step down. Bali is in the grip of a reform fever every bit as powerful and consuming as that in Jakarta, perhaps more so. As one of the more idyllic of the more than 13,000 islands that make up the nation of Indonesia, Bali often is dismissed as a tourist playground.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - At Jakarta's infrastructure monitoring nerve center, live TV cameras track traffic flows on port access roads and highways, satellite images show cloud cover, and a Twitter feed allows officials to respond in real time to any public complaints. But the only movement comes from the flowing screen images, since there is no one working at the room's empty desks. Senior public works officials interviewed by Reuters said they do not know how to use the system. They cannot name a single infrastructure project to be finished in Indonesia's capital this year, despite their budget of $384 million.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - When a sick Indonesian baby died after 10 hospitals in Jakarta turned her family away in February, critics blamed a pilot health insurance scheme that had overwhelmed the city's public hospitals. The program, introduced in November, gave health insurance to around 5 million people in Jakarta categorized as poor. Long queues quickly formed at already stretched hospital emergency rooms as many patients, some who were not even ill, sought to take advantage of being covered for the first time.